Hans Rolfe was a German lawyer who served as the defense cousel for ex-Nazi judges Ernst Janning, Emil Hahn, Werner Lampe, and Friedrich Hofstetter during their 1948 trial at Nuremberg.
Biography[]
Hans Rolfe was born in Bavaria, Germany, and he served in the Wehrmacht during World War II before becoming a defense lawyer in postwar West Germany. Rolfe was inspired by the German jurist Ernst Janning from a young age, and his desire to achieve what Janning had achieved motivated him throughout the war. In 1948, he served as defense counsel for ex-Nazi judges Janning, Emil Hahn, Werner Lampe, and Friedrich Hofstetter out of a desire to leave the Germans a shred of dignity by finding such respected judges not guilty. Rolfe sought to force the Americans to call a halt to the Nuremberg Trials, lest the Americans feel the need to occupy West Germany forever and continue to prosecute ex-Nazis; Rolfe believed that the Germans would lose the right to rule themselves forever in such an event. During the trial, Rolfe made statements and insinuations that seemed to justify Nazi Germany's purported service of the people's interests, the sterilizations of political dissidents (he argued that sterilization was an accepted practice in both Europe and the United States), and the 1935 death sentence of Lehman Feldenstein and the imprisonment of Irene Hoffmann for perjury after she denied having an illicit sexual affair with the older Jewish merchant. Rolfe's aggressive cross-examination of Hoffmann, during which he attempted to get her to "confess" having a sexual relationship with Feldenstein rather than a daughterly one, motivated Janning to stand up and demand that Rolfe stop, as he said that Rolfe was re-enacting what the Nazis had done to Hoffmann in 1935. Janning decried Rolfe for his repetitions of Nazi causes and justifications, but Rolfe continued to try to prove that the four men were innocent, even after prosecutor Tad Lawson showed the courtroom footage from the Dachau and Belsen concentration camps. Rolfe argued that the Germans alone weren't responsible for the Holocaust, saying that the rest of the world had stood idly by as Adolf Hitler threatened war and genocide, that the Soviet Union had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler on the eve of his invasion of Poland, that the Vatican City had concluded a "concordat" with the Nazis to allow them to stay in power, and even pointed out that Winston Churchill praised Hitler's strength in a 1938 speech. Ultimately, Chief Judge Dan Haywood found the four Nazis guilty and sentenced them to life in prison, helped in great part by Janning's damning testimony, in which Janning said that he and the other defendants were guilty. Rolfe met with Haywood after the trial to persuade him to visit his client Janning in jail, but he taunted Haywood by telling him that most of the defendants in the concurrent IG Farben case were either acquitted or given ligth sentences, and bet him that all four of the judges would be released within four years.